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Student
Keene, New Hampshire
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I'm looking to learn more about what nuclear engineers do.
I've had a huge interest in Nuclear Energy since I was a little kid, and I'm wondering what the duties and responsibilities are for the positions, my educated guess would be that you manage the output of power for the site and your local power grid you're plant is attached to. but beyond that, I'm not able to guess, and while I could look it up, I've always preferred first-person accounts of what people do at their jobs, if you have additional information please let me know, thank you for reading my post.
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2 answers
Joseph Neilson
Radiation Detection Physicist
217
Answers
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Updated
Joseph’s Answer
There's many different subfields of nuclear science and engineering which can have quite different duties.
Your guess sounds like a nuclear engineer involved in power reactor operations - and yes, managing output power is certainly part of that job, as is managing the various subsystems to ensure they are all contributing to the generation of electricity and are balanced in the right way . There's a reactor operator who talks about some of these things while reviewing and reacting to other videos on YouTube - look up TFolseNuclear to get some insight into that side of nuclear engineering. There's also a few reactor simulator games you can find online that give you some idea about the workings of a power plant and the sort of parameters a reactor operator has to keep in balance (although be aware these games are huge simplifications, and they don't really match up properly to what an operator will be doing - a lot of the micromanagement you need to do in these games is actually automated in real life)
However, that's not the only type of role a nuclear engineer might work in - there's nuclear engineers working in maintenance and construction (nuclear new build) roles, nuclear engineers designing the next generation of advanced reactors, nuclear engineers working on fuel processing and manufacturing, and many more subfields. I'd recommend at least doing some searching to find what subfields are out there and what specific areas might interest you the most - you can then look up first-hand accounts from people working in those roles.
My own role probably sits closer to nuclear physics than nuclear engineering, although there's a huge overlap and many nuclear engineers also end up in my field - and that's radiation detection and measurement. There's plenty of variety in my role, balancing laboratory analysis with in-the-field measurements, and even research and development work, so my duties can include practical data collection, data analysis and report writing, quality assurance monitoring, reading research journals, attending conferences, training others - lots of different things.
Your guess sounds like a nuclear engineer involved in power reactor operations - and yes, managing output power is certainly part of that job, as is managing the various subsystems to ensure they are all contributing to the generation of electricity and are balanced in the right way . There's a reactor operator who talks about some of these things while reviewing and reacting to other videos on YouTube - look up TFolseNuclear to get some insight into that side of nuclear engineering. There's also a few reactor simulator games you can find online that give you some idea about the workings of a power plant and the sort of parameters a reactor operator has to keep in balance (although be aware these games are huge simplifications, and they don't really match up properly to what an operator will be doing - a lot of the micromanagement you need to do in these games is actually automated in real life)
However, that's not the only type of role a nuclear engineer might work in - there's nuclear engineers working in maintenance and construction (nuclear new build) roles, nuclear engineers designing the next generation of advanced reactors, nuclear engineers working on fuel processing and manufacturing, and many more subfields. I'd recommend at least doing some searching to find what subfields are out there and what specific areas might interest you the most - you can then look up first-hand accounts from people working in those roles.
My own role probably sits closer to nuclear physics than nuclear engineering, although there's a huge overlap and many nuclear engineers also end up in my field - and that's radiation detection and measurement. There's plenty of variety in my role, balancing laboratory analysis with in-the-field measurements, and even research and development work, so my duties can include practical data collection, data analysis and report writing, quality assurance monitoring, reading research journals, attending conferences, training others - lots of different things.
Hello, Joseph. Thank you for this response. However, I also want to know if as a Nuclear Engineer or Nuclear Physics, would I study how to reduce/ eliminate radioactive waste more quickly & create protective gear against radiation? If not, what field do I need to enter to study this or where else can I study this?
M
No problem. Nuclear Engineering and Nuclear Physics could both lead to a career working on those problems, as could other fields like Nuclear or Process chemistry.
Joseph Neilson
Waste treatment and reprocessing can involve a lot of chemistry, so can be a good field for people from chemistry backgrounds, but there's also roles for nuclear engineers too. Reprocessing is actually something that was done much more extensively in the early years of the nuclear industry when there was more concern about the amount of uranium reserves, but has fallen out of favour as being uneconomical compared to simpler storage and disposal. There is still some interest though, and there's some interesting nuclear engineering ideas around subcritical systems and accelerator driven systems being used to increase burnup and transmute wastes into something shorter-lived.
Joseph Neilson
Protective gear is an interesting question and something that a lot of people get mislead about. A lot of protective gear used in nuclear doesn't actually protect against radiation much.
Joseph Neilson
To protect against high energy gamma and neutron radiation requires using dense and thick shielding, which will never really be something that can practically be worn as gear. On the other hand, much alpha and beta radiation is largely blocked by regular clothing and doesn't require specialist gear. You will see lead aprons and similar used to protect against lower energy x-ray radiation, but actually most protective gear in nuclear isn't for protecting from radiation directly - instead it's protecting you from getting contamination on you or inside you.
Joseph Neilson
Radiation isn't a problem once you move away from the source of radiation, so what you really don't want is to get part of the radioactive stuff stuck to you. There's a lot of protective gear designed to stop stuff getting stuck to you, but designing that isn't really anything special to nuclear - anything that's good at protecting you from regular contamination like chemicals, biological hazards or even just regular dirt is also probably quite good at stopping radioactive stuff getting stuck to you.
Joseph Neilson
If you've got any more questions, you might be better asking as a separate question on here - it's really awkward to answer follow up questions with the character limits in these replies.
Joseph Neilson
Nathan Parker
Engineer
6
Answers
Indianapolis, Indiana
Updated
Nathan’s Answer
Within the USA, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts together an online resource that is a good starting point for looking into a general description of job, its basic duties, average pay across the country, etc., and that resource is the Occupational Outlook Handbook. They have an entry in there specifically for nuclear engineers that covers, in general, what they do, their work environment, how to become one, and the future job outlook of that profession. This link will take you to the summary entry where you can read about them, and there are sections/tabs along the top of the entry for the other information: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/nuclear-engineers.htm
Find out more information about nuclear engineers in the US BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/nuclear-engineers.htm
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